WASHINGTON, 2 May 2004 — The pictures being shown across the Arab world Friday of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners have been a disaster: They have undermined America’s hopes of rebuilding Iraq, threatened the safety of its troops in the country and shattered what remains of its standing in the Arab world. What scant chance existed earlier this week of the US occupiers “winning the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, has surely vanished after the release of these pictures of Iraqis being humiliated by their supposed liberators.
One sole tiny scrap of consolation may gleaned from the otherwise unmitigated debacle. At least they came out. Whatever its failings, America is a tough country for a cover-up. Be it the checks and balances of the system, the huge influence of lawyers, the relatively permissive libel laws, or the competitive instincts of the commercial media — it is hard to sweep something under the rug for ever. It is difficult to imagine a similar airing of such filthy laundry elsewhere.
But the consolation ends there. Already, the firestorm over the pictures may have had an impact on the broader US military strategy in Iraq. Quite possibly the images influenced the decision to pull back the Marines from Fallujah (or as the military commanders in Iraq prefer to say, to “reposition” them) — just a few days after those same commanders were insisting that fighters in the city would be crushed, and those responsible for the savage murder there of four US security contractors on March 31 would be brought to justice.
Instead, the US has been obliged to enlist a general from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded Republican Guard to head an all-Iraqi force in the city, and the fighters can claim a moral victory. But after the broadcast of the pictures, and the ensuing fury across Iraq and beyond, the Pentagon probably had no choice.
Even beforehand, Gen. John Abizaid, the head of US Central Command who is in overall charge of US military operations in Iraq, was privately warning the White House that the subjugation of Fallujah might lead to more, not less, resistance across Iraq.
That calculation would surely have been doubly true had a full-scale military assault followed the revelation of the sordid and demeaning treatment of Iraqi prisoners by the military of a country which never misses a chance to trumpet its commitment to human rights and democracy. Now, even assuming a “peaceful” solution in Fallujah, the prison abuse footage will be used by opponents of the US to turn public opinion decisively against the occupation.
The new Iraq, it was said, would be so different from Saddam’s rule, with its dreaded prisons and pervasive terror. It may yet be. Instead, it now transpires that the US military had been conducting its own — admittedly less murderous — maltreatment of the Iraqis it was supposed to be rescuing, in the very same Abu Gharib prison that had been the symbol of Saddam’s repression.
Friday the prison pictures were being shown on television throughout the Arab world. The cable channel Al-Jazeera introduced them by denouncing the “immoral practices” of Iraq’s occupation forces, and spared its viewers few details.
Among the images were those of a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands, and a pile of naked prisoners entwined as if engaged in a sex act. Most humiliating of all perhaps, for a culture which prizes modesty, in which male nudity is considered shaming, and women have a subordinate role in society, was the footage shown by Al-Jazeera and the Al-Arabiya station of a young female soldier, grinning and apparently smoking a cigarette, standing near a hooded naked prisoner and pointing at his genitals.
Maybe, as their lawyers claim, the six military policemen who are facing criminal charges were poorly trained and acting on the orders of superiors.
These latter include intelligence officers and private sector “investigators” hired by the Pentagon, who had told the low-ranking soldiers to soften up the prisoners — and then congratulated for the “fantastic job” they were doing.
Maybe the soldiers had not been properly trained and were badly supervised. Such niceties may mitigate their punishment by a court martial. But they will surely be lost on Arab public opinion. So too will the expression of “deep disgust” by President Bush, and his insistence that the servicemen responsible “do not reflect the true nature of the American people... or the nature of the men and women we send overseas.” For all too many people in the Arab people, one suspects, they do.
In the US media, by contrast, outrage has been slow to manifest itself.
Until Bush was directly questioned on the matter at a joint press appearance with Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin, the White House had been silent. Eyebrows had been raised, but little more. There is a passing acknowledgement of the fury in the Arab world, but virtually no mention of the outrage and consternation among America’s traditional friends, and the condemnation delivered by Tony Blair, Washington’s staunchest ally in the increasingly unhappy Iraqi adventure.
Even without mentioning the prison abuse controversy, Richard Holbrooke, the former US ambassador to the United Nations (and a possible secretary of state under a president John Kerry) described the situation as “disintegration verging on collapse.” On Capitol Hill too, the voices of protest have been few, drowned out by ferocious partisan exchanges to mark the first anniversary of Bush’s “Mission accomplished” appearance on an aircraft carrier flight deck, and the grim daily tidings from the Iraqi battlefield, where more US soldiers died in April than in the seven-week-long war proper of 2003.
One exception was the Republican Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa, an opponent of the war. “The US has historically prided itself on treating prisoners of war with decency and respect,” he declared, “This has to be investigated, and accountability obtained, within the American military justice system.” But soon the cable channels were back on safer, more familiar ground, the latest legal travails of Michael Jackson.
Never Land is not only the name of the singer’s ranch in California; it could also the Bush administration’s mindset as it still cannot bring itself to acknowledge the impact of the prison abuse pictures, and their disastrous impact.
The US authorities are trying to repair the damage. The commander of Camp Xray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — another US military prison where the treatment of detainees has drawn fierce controversy — will take charge of the various detention centers in Iraq where 8,000 people are being held.
At the same time Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, has ordered administrative punishment for seven officers who supervised the six military policemen who have been charged. But this will not resolve the issue of the privately contracted defense and security personnel — estimated to number 20,000 in Iraq — whose relationship with the fulltime US military is as murky as their precise legal status.
Belatedly, five Democratic senators are now demanding a formal inquiry into the activities of private military contractors, virtually unregulated by the federal government. But the damage, almost certainly, has been done.
Even the klieg lights and TV cameras of a full-scale Congressional hearings will be no match for grainy footage of the humiliations visited last winter on wretched Iraqi prisoners.